one week of lariam: pills & thrills & bellyaches

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so today Im in nouackchott, theres not much here and Im just resting before I head for saint louis (senegal) through rosso. thus, Ive decided to talk about lariam.

honestly, I was quite curious about the effects this antipaludic might have on me, or on anybody else for that matter (as I manifested by asking about it to any single person that had taken it). these effects, besides prevcenting mmalaria with about a 90% of effectiveness are mainly psicological and range from VIVID dremas to mild hallucinations, passing by the always sweet road of paranoia. I had heard people having some crazy ing dreams, not nightmares, just dreams so intense that wouldnt let them rest. heard of others having strong paranoia, which might be quite fun when youre the only skinny weak white piece of around. heard of strong mood changes, heard of indecission... so to anybody curious about this medicine, did i experience some psycological side effects? yes. how where they? keep on reding!

as most of you probably alerady know I have a pretty strange mood that makes me on the short term a nice guy, on the mid term an , and in the long term a sweet freak. this being so, Ill ignore any weird behaviour Ive had in the last week and attribute to lariam only two episodes: but bear in mind that these are very hot countries where I walk, and heat and dihydration always affect people. both where what I would describe as mild and very short shroom "trips" with some added paranoia.

the first was in the train, and consisted on an apalling distortion of peoples faces, which adding darkness and the train being a ing birkenau wagon made it a bit scary. just closed my eyes, relaxed opened them again, looked at a random face, it still looked creepy and so I simply shut my eyes for a couple of minutes till all was gone.

second was also in the dark, in the dunes that separate the chinguetti new and old town. I was walking a bit apart from the other four people and was not wearing contact or glasses, so my vision was . when I saw a shape that could have been anything. and you know how when you see something you dont quite understand you try and guess and make a couple of strange suggestions to yourself? well in a span of a minute I made like like five suggestions, the last of which was a european couple embracing and kissing each other in s rainbow... I was sure of this one until i was about 2feet away from the camel. but that day I walke 24km in the sun and didnt drink enough, so who knows how much is lariams fault...

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Photos

road to nouakchott
this old mercedes had to stop 3 times to cool down. 400km to nouackhott were endless for the 4 of us packed in the back seat. this pictures was taken minutes before we had to push the car...